Tag: campus speech
In praise of safe spaces on campus
March 9, 2017 | Post
I want to come out in favor of safe spaces. Not everywhere, or for all purposes, but in general I think there should be a strong presumption in favor of limited and exclusive safe spaces for any group that wants to establish one. Of course, the group would need to have the ability and legal […]
Putin’s Crackdown on Social Media Provides One Important Reminder to Americans
June 20, 2016 | Post
Russia has been cracking down on its internal dissent, limiting speech that does not coincide with the government’s narrow and controversial policies. Last year, up to 54 people were sent to prison for hate speech, marking a dramatic five-fold increase from five years ago. Take Anastasia Bubeyeva, for example. Bubeyeva now lives alone with her […]
Court to North Carolina State: Stop Requiring Students to Get a License to Speak
June 17, 2016 | Post
Those trying to curtail free speech often invoke its very limited exceptions to achieve their goals. For example, they often point to legitimate restrictions of speech based on “time, place, and manner.” This limited legal restriction to free speech allows police to, say, prevent public speech with a loudspeaker from occurring at 2 a.m. because […]
Desperate Students to College Administrators: Stop Being Paternalistic Babysitters
May 27, 2016 | Post
If you’ve been part of any conversation about American higher education recently, you might have heard someone complain that colleges and universities are morphing from educators to babysitters. Now, students at Dartmouth College are fighting back against the perceived shift. Leaders of the school’s student government delivered a scathing petition, signed by 1,200 students, demanding […]
Tis the Season of Disinvitation
May 6, 2016 | Post
Jason Riley, esteemed Wall Street Journal columnist and frequent commentator on the issues facing black Americans, was disinvited from his planned commencement speech at Virginia Tech this week. The department head and other faculty members had concerns about his writings on race, which focus on how government policy that is supposed to help black people […]
New Gallup Survey: 73% of College Students Don’t Think Free Speech Is Being Threatened
April 8, 2016 | Post
A new Gallup survey, sponsored by the John S. and James Knight Foundation and the Newseum Institute, compiled 3,072 phone interviews with college students and 2,031 interviews with adults to study how Americans feel about free speech. The findings? Apparently, 73 percent of college students thought that their ability to freely express themselves was secure. […]
Tiny Sombreros and Even Smaller Free Expression Protections
March 28, 2016 | Post
Two members of the student government at Bowdoin College faced impeachment proceedings for committing an “act of ethnic stereotyping” because they attended a party where some guests wore tiny sombreros. It’s the kind of story that will make you want to reach for the tequila. But it’s also one that is unfortunately all too common […]
Micro-aggression and Macro-aggression
March 3, 2016 | Post
“The best response to micro-aggression is macro-aggression.” So says Cal State University Los Angeles Professor Robert Weide in response to an editor from the news website Breitbart giving a speech before students at Cal State University. Let’s unpack that statement, shall we? Micro-aggressions, defined as real or perceived everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, […]